Protected (Book 1 in the Ariya Adams trilogy) (16 page)

I decided I’d have time to run and shower before he even woke up. Caroline wasn’t in the apartment
, so I guessed she had something to do. At least I didn’t hear her moving around. I went to my room and put on my running clothes. I slipped on my sneakers and opened the front door to head out when I almost ran into James. He was standing there outside my door.

“James?” I closed the door behind me. “What’s wrong? Is Caroline okay?”

“Yes. She had to go, so I was keeping watch.”

“Keeping watch?”

Clearly, Devon was a big issue, or why would I need someone to watch me? I made a mental note. James just nodded once.

“Sorr
y to be a bother.” There was no need for my sarcasm, but he hurt me, and this is how I lashed out.

I was going to play it cool. The best thing to do would be to just start running
, but I couldn’t. I had to say something. I needed to know what was going on with us.

“Did I do something wrong?”
It came out whinier than I had wanted it to.

He hadn’t spoken to me
much since the kiss last night, and when he had, it had been cold and short. I know Caroline said he felt guilty. In my mind, that was wrong of him. With everything else going on, a silly thing like if James liked me or not seemed like something that should be dropped, but I just couldn’t. I wanted him to comfort me and be there for me and thought he would be, at least as my friend, but so far, he was still just cold.

“No, Ariya.
Of course not. You’ve done everything right. More than right. I’m sorry. I know you’re confused, but I don’t know what is going to happen, and that means going back to how I know to act. This is all sort of unprecedented.” His voice softened at first, but he finished with a stony gaze. The man I was falling for was suddenly nowhere to be found. I wasn’t giving up that easily on this, though.

“What does that mean? You kissed me
, remember? Why did you do it? Does that mean we aren’t even going to be friends anymore?”

“I shouldn’t have kissed you. It was wrong and a mistake and it won’t happen again. I’m sorry.”
Ouch.
There it was. I wasn’t expecting something so mean to come out of his mouth.

It sounded
wrong, hearing him say something cruel, just as it sounded wrong to hear him speak so icily to Devon the other night. Hearing more would cause my feelings to skyrocket either towards anger or sadness and neither were reactions I wanted to feel at the moment. I wish I had started running the minute I stepped outside the door instead of giving in to my curiosity for some stupid boy.

“
Yeah, I’m sorry, too.” I turned to run.

A long, long run was going to be the thing to bring normalcy back to me. James didn’t
appear to follow, at least as far as I could tell, and for that I was glad. I knew I shouldn’t have thought he was so wonderful. He was just like the rest of them. A jerk. He didn’t care about me. He just used me.

Okay Ariya
,
this is probably one of those moments that your emotions are causing you to overreact.
It was just a kiss, it’s not like I got used for much, but he shouldn’t have spent all that time getting to know me and giving me the wrong idea. That much was true. The James that just had that conversation with me was not the same James that I had spent the semester getting to know.

I had only been running for about a minute when someone jerked my arm and I flew back. My heart jumped
, and I was convinced I was being attacked. I looked up and saw James again. Ugh, why couldn’t I be left alone for a minute?

“Am I not allowed to run
?”

“By yourself?
No. Ariya, listen to me. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so rude, but Caroline was staked because of me. I can’t just be free to do whatever I want. I’m sorry I kissed you. I couldn’t help it. You’re amazing. Amazing doesn’t even begin to describe it. Ariya, I’ve never felt this way about a person before. But, I cannot be distracted right now. This is how it has to be. This is how it has always been. I’m truly sorry if I hurt you.”

“Who made you the one in charge?
Why is Caroline getting killed by some psycho
your
fault?” I demanded.

“You
wouldn’t understand.” His eyes hardened again, and I couldn’t help feeling the irritation from last night come rushing back.

“More secrets then
, I guess? Well fine, how about something you can answer. If you were free to do whatever you wanted, would you want me?”

James stared at me for a long time. Did he really have to think that much about it?

“I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?” The
fury was definitely back and hitting me full force. “Why even apologize if you aren’t going to give me straight answers, James? I thought you were different. I actually thought you might care about me.”

“You’re not listening
, Ariya. I do care about you. But this…” He pointed between the two of us as if I didn’t understand what he meant by ‘this.’ “It can’t be anymore. Okay?”

“Why, because
you’re a vampire?” I inquired.

“Among other things
, yes. I am a vampire and you’re not.”

“Caroline and Nick fell in love when she was a human. Is that so horrible of a thought? They made it work
, and then they decided she would be a vampire.” I defended the thought of a human and vampire because, well, because Caroline told me it worked for her and I believed her.

“It isn’t like that with you and me. I wouldn’t ever turn you.”

Realization hit me and suddenly it was clear. That was it then. He couldn’t see being with me long enough to turn me, so what was the point? Why had I thought any different? If that kiss hadn’t happened last night, I would have continued thinking he wanted to be just friends. That’s probably all he had ever wanted from this. Gosh, I was stupid. I stepped back towards the apartment.

“I never said I would want to be turned
, James.”

I
halted and turned myself back towards home. I didn’t want to talk anymore. I was done talking. If he wasn’t going to budge on his thoughts, then I was going to have to get over it; and I was going to have to get over him. Pretending not to care would be no problem. I could turn it off.

He would be staying here
, of course, and I’d have to get over that fact. From what Caroline said, Nick was his best friend. Nick would go where Caroline was and Caroline was my best friend. Therefore, he didn’t have a choice but to hang out around this college town until Devon was found. Maybe he would leave then. If that’s how it was going to be, then I would get over the nonsense of thinking this was going somewhere. I walked into the house and saw that Caroline was back. Good, that meant James didn’t have to be there.

“Hey!” she said in a cheery voice. I looked over at her and just kept walking. She looked surprised.
“Ariya? Is everything okay?”

“No
, Caroline, it’s not okay.”

It wasn’t as if I was mad at her
, but the pain of my conversation with James and the need for normalcy again was overwhelming me.

“I don’t want to be involved in this. I don’t want to know there are vampires and werewolves. I want to be normal. I want things back
to how they used to be. I thought I could handle everything, but I just don’t want to.” I knew I was being dramatic, but the mood swings were back and I couldn’t control them. I wasn’t myself.

She just stood there. The door opened behind me and James walked in. I stormed off to my room
, slamming the door behind me. I heard lowered voices and the front door shut again. Good, he was gone.

I checked my phone to see I had a missed call from Riley. Riley! Yes, I’d go back to my day of distraction. Riley would make me laugh and we could just forget about the vampires. I called him back and he told me he was free. He suggested a double feature at the movies. It was
kind of our thing.

Riley was a movi
e buff, and since I loved movies, too, it worked out on the days he needed a movie date. I told him I was in as long as one was a chick flick. He sighed loudly over the phone and said if he had to make that sacrifice to spend time with me, he would do it. I felt better already.

I got dressed and left the house without even telling Caroline where I was going. Seeing
how James had been there earlier to look out for me, I felt a bit guilty. No! Stop thinking about vampires. If they were so keen on looking out for me, they’d figure out where I was and deal with it.

Riley and I grabbed a bite to eat at the coffee shop next to the movie theater to catch up on the evening the night before. It felt like forever ago th
at we’d had the Halloween party when in reality it had only been last night. Obviously, I left the crazy stuff out. He was giving me the rundown of what he thought of everyone’s costumes.

“Why did you leave so early? You and C
aroline keep disappearing on me,” he said, taking a bite of his sandwich.

“Oh, umm
m, Caroline wasn’t feeling well,” I stammered, trying to think of a good excuse besides ‘it was fine.’ He looked at me like I was crazy.

“You guys are the healthiest people I know. You are never sick and now you’ve both been sick twice
, leaving things early? You need to clean your apartment or something.” Smiling at me, he took another bite.

“I’ll
make sure we get more Vitamin C,” I laughed.

“Your costume was perfect last night
, by the way. James cleaned up nice, too.” He set his food down and looked up at me. “So, what’s going on with you guys?”

“Nothing,
” I said, not wanting to bring up the James topic, when we had been doing a great job of having fun.

“Nothing?
It seemed like there was something last night,” he said with an immensely full mouth from his previous chomp.

He winked at me
, which made me kick him under the table. There was something about the way he kept at it that caught me off guard, though.

“No, nothing.
It isn’t going to work.” He must have heard the
back off
tone in my voice, because he dropped the subject.

He gave me the run-down of movies that were showing. We were seeing one of his action movies and then one of my chick flicks. We had a blast at the movie theater. He loved his movie and hated mine and I conceded to loving both. We
then headed back to his house.
This had been a perfect idea,
I thought. A distraction to keep my mind off … nope, not even going to think the word. I smiled to myself.

“Want dinner? I was going to make something for fun.” Riley was an amazing
cook.

Good looking and a great cook, it wasn’t fair
, really. Some girl someday was going to have quite a prize on her hands.

“Yes please! Otherwise I’ll be forced into reheated pasta or Ramen tonight.” He sighed heavily.

“You need help. What would you do without me?” I looked up at him.

I honestly didn’t know. Why didn’t I have feelings for Riley? He would never mess with me. He wouldn’t lead me on
, and then then ditch me. Although, that would mean he would have to have feelings like that for me in the first place. Which just wasn’t possible at this point. He was warm, caring, athletic, kind of smart, he could cook, and he took school seriously. Why did nothing ever happen between us? I just smiled at him and shook my head.

“What would I do indeed?
”

“Ariya, do you need to talk more about James? You seem sad. I dropped it earlier
, but you’re still in a funk. I can tell, so don’t lie to me. You can come to me with anything, you know.” He stopped walking and took me by the arm while he spoke.

His eyes pleaded with me. He had said so many times when I was going through things with guys
that he hated seeing me upset.

“I know, I’m sorry.
I just…” I trailed off trying to get my thoughts together enough to explain. “After he kissed me at your party, I figured that meant something, but clearly it didn’t. He told me it was a mistake this morning when I asked him about it. Now, he’s being a bit standoffish and I don’t understand what I did wrong. He claims nothing, but normally I have at least some sort of an idea of what happened. But right now, I have nothing. Things hadn’t even really picked up, they were just warming up, so I don’t know what I could have done.” That was only partly true.

In my current state
, I could see that James’ situation was difficult. What I couldn’t see was why he would kiss me if he wasn’t ever planning on being together long-term. I didn’t want to be a vampire, but the fact that he couldn’t ever see turning me should have been enough to stop acting like something was there.

“It’s never anything you do wrong. Trust me. We’ve been through this how many times? It isn’t you. These guys you pick are idiots.” He was working hard to convince me and make me feel better
, like he always did when I needed the pieces picked up.